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Scherchen was born in Berlin. Originally a violist, he played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens. He conducted in Riga from 1914 to 1916 and in Königsberg from 1928 to 1933, after which he left Germany in protest at the Nazi regime and worked in Switzerland. Along with the philanthropist Werner Reinhart, Scherchen played a leading role in shaping the musical life of Winterthur for many years, with numerous premiere performances, the emphasis being placed on contemporary music. From 1922 to 1950 he was the principal conductor of the city orchestra Winterthur (today known as Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur).[1]

Like Vasily Safonov and (in later life) Leopold Stokowski, Scherchen commonly avoided the use of a baton.[3] His technique when in this mode sometimes caused problems for players; an unidentified BBC Symphony Orchestra bassoonist told the singer Ian Wallace that interpreting Scherchen's minuscule hand movements was like trying to milk a flying gnat.[4] According to Fritz Spiegl,[5] Scherchen worked largely through verbal instructions to his players and his scores were peppered with reminders of what he needed to say at each critical point in the music.

However, Scherchen did not always dispense with the baton. The film of his rehearsal of his edition of Bach's The Art of Fugue with the CBC Toronto Chamber Orchestra shows him using a baton throughout, and very effectively.

His first wife - who was also his third wife - was Auguste Marie (Gustl) Jansen, whom he married on June 17, 1921. After a brief marriage to actress Gerda Müller 1927-1929, he was again together with Gustl Jansen. In 1936 Scherchen married Chinese composer Xiao Shuxian in Peking. A daughter, Tona Scherchen, was born to them in 1938. She has also made a name for herself as a composer. The last of his five wives was the Zurich-based Romanian mathematics teacher Pia Andronescu,[6][7] with whom he had 5 children: Myriam, David, Esther, Nathan and Alexandra.

He died in Florence, survived by a number of children, from five wives and other women.[8]

Until 2014, his daughter, Myriam Scherchen, co-ran the music label Tahra, which released officially authorized historical recordings of conductors such as Scherchen, Furtwängler, Mengelberg and others, generally drawn from primary recorded sources. Tahra ceased business after the death of the co-principal of the label, René Trémine.

The sister of Auguste Maria Jansen, Helen (Lene) Jansen, was married to the Hungarian cartographer Alexander Radó, who, under the alias ‘Dora', was a member of the european-wide resistance organization known as the "Rote Kapelle". When Radó was threatened in Switzerland by German security agents and faced eviction, Hermann Scherchen hid him in his apartment in Geneva.[citation needed]

Scherchen recorded an unusually wide range of repertoire, from the baroque to the contemporary. His Mahler recordings, made before Mahler became a part of the standard repertoire, were especially influential; so too were his recordings of Bach and Handel, which helped pave the way for the period-performance practice movement. Included as well were significant recordings of music by Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Glière, Bartók, Schoenberg and many others.